So I’ve been gone. Hence the lack of posts.

The first excursion was a three-day “Ride Across Wisconsin,” which my brother-in-law does every year with some friends of his. I joined them this year as we rode from Prairie du Chein to Sheboygan (more or less). I logged 314 miles in three days.

On the second day of riding, which also happened to be the easiest, my big toes went numb. They’ve kinda been numb since. I looked up the problem in a bunch of forums and other internet sites and figured out that it’s a fairly common issue — caused by bad socks, poorly fitting shoes, improper cleat position, or pedaling technique. It has something to do with the nerves in the metatarsals not getting the proper rest . . . I don’t know. I read enough about it to make sense of it, but I can’t really articulate it to anyone else.

I didn’t do much in the days following the bike trip. Just a few swimming workouts. Eileen and I went to Blackhawk Lake to camp. We took Eileen’s boat and she rowed each day we were there.

My toes were still numb afterwards. Yesterday I soaked them in hot water, which hurt. Today, I biked and ran. I experimented with my pedaling, and I wore my good bike socks. My toes didn’t seem to get any worse; in fact, they actually felt best when I was running on them, but my IT band started getting a little irritated on the run.

Afterward, Eileen and I were discussing my problems.

Tim: I’ve had this IT problem before and it’s not gonna go away before the Ironman. It’s an overuse injury.

Eileen: Maybe you should take vitamin N.

Tim: Vitamin N?

Eileen: NSAIDS, like Advil.

Tim: Is Advil an NSAID?

Eileen: Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug?

Tim: Hmm. I guess so. You know, when it comes right down to it, the Ironman is pretty stupid. You know that thin line between tough and stupid? This crosses right into stupid. Now a rowing marathon, that’s tough.

Eileen: Well. . .

Tim: Ok, it’s a little stupid, too. It’s really a thin line.

Eileen: One might even say it’s more of an area.

Tim: It’s transparent. Actually, it’s like a gradient.

Eileen: You never really know when you cross it. You’re always in both.

Tim: Yeah, but on either end, there are pure areas. Pure toughness would be like if you did something tough involuntarily. Or selflessly. Like saving a baby from a whirlpool.

Eileen: Yeeeaaah (Looking doubtful) . . . And pure stupid?

Tim: That’s when you die trying to do something tough, like if you try a Jackass stunt and end up killing yourself as a result.

Eileen: So you do something you don’t really know anything about?

Tim: Yeah.

Eileen: Well, I’m glad we got that figured out.

Tim. Me too.

Message from Eileen: the above is an approximation of the conversation we had. Tim actually brought up taking advil during the race and I told him that might be hard on his stomach (and that he should probably just take it after the race since that’s when inflammation is the worst anyway). I don’t advocate painkillers. I hate taking them – and the vitamin N comment was me quoting some of the sports medicine people I’ve run into who dish out NSAIDs like they are vitamins.

I awoke this morning to an intermittent beeping sound — so intermittent, in fact, that after it would wake me up, I’d lie there for a second sleepily contemplating whether or not I had heard a beeping sound until I finally drifted back to sleep, at which point, I’d hear the sound again. This happened about five times, probably.

Then I heard the floorboards creaking loud enough to wake me up for real. I immediately ruled out cats as culprits. It sounded more like a human-sized weight. The dog was right next to me in bed. I quickly deduced that it had to be a person.

In our house!

I slammed my hand on Eileen’s side of the bed to feel if she was there. If she had been, it would have been a rude awakening indeed.

Eileen walked into the room just as I was groggily sitting up. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“There’s a beeping sound. I think it’s a smoke alarm, but I can’t find it.”

I got up and walked out of the bedroom. “It’s this one,” I said, walking toward the most obvious smoke detector.

“I already checked that one,” Eileen said.

I stood there for a full minute until it went off again. I was wrong. “It’s the one in the bedroom,” I said.

“I was just in there trying to get it down, but I couldn’t. Is there one in the piano room?”

“I don’t think so.” I walked into the piano room and turned on the light. The alarm beeped again. It seemed to be coming from the original detector. I thought for a second and came up with a brilliant plan: check the basement.

“Where are you going?” Eileen said, as I walked through the kitchen. I mumbled an incoherent response.

At the bottom of the basement stairs, I paused until I heard it again. I sneezed just as it sounded. It was coming from the furnace room (Can I call that place a cellar? Cuz I do.). I walked into the cellar and listened again.

Eileen came in shortly afterwards and we both listened. “Did you say ‘shit’?” she asked.

“No. I sneezed.”

It beeped.

“There.” We both pointed at a smoke detector lying uselessly on the workbench. I picked it up and opened it. It had no battery.

“Shit.”

We looked around. It beeped again. We looked back at the work bench. There was another one lying there — with batteries.

“Good grief,” I said, as we left the cellar. While we were heading back upstairs, I heard my alarm clock going off.

When the rain was really coming down, I decided to go out to the front porch and watch things happen. I took a chair and propped open the door with my foot. Here’s the view:

While I was enjoying the street rapids, I noticed a lot of cars turning around on Highland just north of our house. From the porch, I couldn’t see what sort of foreboding obstacle lay ahead, but I figured the intersection of Highland and Old University was probably a little flooded. I decided to go take a look with my camera.

If you click on the first one, you can watch a little film of a minivan getting stuck (16 MB). The second one just shows the general water depth and the number of idiots who tried driving through it (9 MB).

After taking the pictures and videos, I took the camera home and went back to the intersection to just watch. The Sushi Box chef was outside, trying to stop water from going through the door of his building. I went over and helped him, then I got recruited for a minivan push.

Good times.